Primary School Joint Winner – Guestling Bradshaw

Primary School Joint Winner – Silverdale Primary Academy

Secondary Winner – Kadootje, The Hastings Academy

2018 School Songwriting Competition

255 children from 9 schools performed at the White Rock Stage and wowed a wonderful audience with some lovely heartfelt songs about flying together.

It was a tough choice for the judges who were evenly split between two primary schools, so we had Joint Winners for the first time. While in the Secondary category who student from William Parker was a real trooper and went on stage after breaking his leg the day before – the show must go on!

Collaborative songwriting is an excellent way of bringing children of all abilities together. Performing their song on a huge stage – the White Rock Theatre – brings enormous confidence.

Although we run it as a competition to add a little extra excitement, the real winners are every child, as they learn so much from creating, learning and performing their own songs – which will last in their memories forever.

Thank you to all the schools who took part – the teachers and pupils who make it all happen: The Baird, Christ Church, Guestling Bradshaw, The Hastings Academy, Robsack Wood, Sandown, Silverdale, Westfield and William Parker.

Primary

Joint Winners

Guestling Bradshaw CE Primary School

Silverdale Primary Academy

Secondary Winner

Kadootje, The Hastings Academy

St Thomas – Good use of adjectives and imagery throughout. Westfield – A song with great sentiment. Ore Village – Really good rhymes, structure, and words over a day in the life of a camp trip. Purely Grey – The rhyming, scanning and metaphors between the beach/relationship were great.

Cold Hearted – “Seagulls nick my doughnut”. Ore Valley – “Creatures crawling up my knees”. St Thomas – “Wouldn’t it be horrid if they just weren’t there”. THA – “Sunflowers in Black and White”

Westfield – Great groove and funky appeal. Guestling Bradshaw – A big range of notes with good melodic interest, rhythmic breaks, a good ending, and good contrasting sections. The Baird – We liked the drum intro and the graded entrance phrase. It was a nice touch for the bridge to change the emotion and add a bittersweet feel. Silverdale – This was a good pop style song with a great summer feel and catchy chorus. Cold Hearted – Good instrumental breaks and chorus hook

Guestling – A very jolly and happy chorus. Christ Church – ‘54321 we’re having fun’ was very catchy. Robsack Wood– A gorgeous melody and tight rhythms. The Baird – A great message and a nice two-part arrangement in the last chorus. Ore Valley – We liked the contrast between the long notes in the chorus and the quick verses.

Christ Church – A really good catchy and melodic song with a great performance full of great props and costume co-ordination. The percussion breaks and chanting ‘54321 we’re having fun” made it special. Guestling Bradshaw – “I felt I was at the beach”. A confident, energetic, jolly and happy performance with good routines, added interest with a beatboxer, nice shouty bits, and a zany pianist. Westfield – “This performance felt like a ‘clan’.” The dance moves, gymnastics, breakdancing and funky backing were great. Silverdale – This was a really good all-around solid and fun performance by the whole class. We really liked the hand moves, the good summery feel, and the great drummer. Cold Hearted – They put in a performance which had the audience rocking in their seats. The drummer was a great speaking/singing lead producing hilarious punk, with good instrumental breaks and chorus hook.

The Judges

Eddie Lewis

Eddie is bass guitarist with local band Kid Kapichi

Sister Susie

Susie is an excellent local rhythm and blues singer and plays in her band, Sister Susie and the Right Band.

Georgia South

Georgia is bass guitarist in local band the Nova Twins 

Andy Croft

Andy is bass guitarist with local folk punk band The Disparate Folk.

Sponsors

Hastings Lions, organisers of the Hastings Half-Marathon have supported us from the very beginning and we are very grateful for their continued support. They enabled us to pay for schools who want it to have their songs recorded.

Hastings Round Table

They host the Hastings Beer and Music Festival and we are very grateful for their donation which helped provide free tickets for families in need.

Magdalen & Lasher Trust

The Magdalen & Lasher Trust funded songwriting support into schools for the first time. It enabled schools to participate and feel very proud of their achievements.

Brewers very kindly donated a large tin of paint to the raffle.

Trinity very kindly donated a food hamper.

Fairlight Hall very kindly donated a hamper to the raffle.

Source Park very kindly donated 6 free entries as prizes

Compere

Jonny Morris, Principle, Silverdale Primary Academy